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Why do founders leave after their companies are acquired? There are many nuanced answers, but in the short and medium term, it’s incentives. Acquirers use 3 incentives to get founders to stay: Sticks. If you leave, you lose X% of the consideration. Acquirers try to put 30%-40% of the founders’ consideration at risk, if they can get away with it. This sort of works, but it leads to “rest-and-vest” behavior if not thoughtfully combined with Carrots (next point).
The average American attention span has fallen from 150 seconds in 2004 to 75 seconds in 2012 to 47 seconds in 2023 - a 5-6% annual rate of decline. Year Avg American Attention Span (sec) CAGR 2004 150 - 2012 75 -6% 2023 47 -5% How does this compare to these blog posts? In 2013, the average reader dwelled on this site for 47 seconds. Today, it’s 33 seconds, a 3.6% decline - which is a bit better !
Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Azure Report - Cloud Infra Looks Good! Microsoft kicked off earnings season with a bang! For software, all eyes were on Azure - which grew 31% YoY (ahead of expectations closer to 29%). What was arguably more impressive (and a better indicator of what’s to come for the rest of infrastructure software than overall Azure growth) was the Azure growth excluding
Andy Meadows, the Head of Partner Success at Payrix joins host Ian Hillis to continue their conversation about building a successful Embedded Payments strategy. As the last episode of a four-part series on the topic, Andy and Ian tackle how software companies can minimize attrition and why it’s important to the payments conversation. Did you miss Parts 1-3?
Speaker: Pete Uselman, Director of Partner Experience at Wind River Payments
Most integrated payments providers share a percent of the payment revenue with their software partners. But, oftentimes, that revenue share is only a fraction of the true income potential software providers can realize. If you want to maximize income opportunities from your payments program, check out Wind River Payments’ webinar-on-demand.
Ready to join the leading conference for B2B SaaS founders, operators and investors from pre-seed to series C? If so, join FastSpring at SaaStock USA 2024 at Booth S5! We’d love to talk with you in person! Join us at the Palmer Events Center, in Austin, TX, from May 13th to 15th, for an extraordinary event dedicated to all things SaaS. Since 2016, SaaStock has helped more founders, investors, and operators connect, learn, and grow than any other SaaS conference globally.
I am pleased to announce that we have just raised $7.2B for the following venture strategies: American Dynamism ($600M), Apps ($1B), Games ($600M), Infrastructure ($1.25B), and Growth ($3.75B). This marks an important milestone for us. When Marc and I started the firm in 2009, the conventional wisdom in Venture Capital was that in any given year, only 15 companies would ever generate $100M in revenue and those 15 companies would drive almost all of VC returns.
I am pleased to announce that we have just raised $7.2B for the following venture strategies: American Dynamism ($600M), Apps ($1B), Games ($600M), Infrastructure ($1.25B), and Growth ($3.75B). This marks an important milestone for us. When Marc and I started the firm in 2009, the conventional wisdom in Venture Capital was that in any given year, only 15 companies would ever generate $100M in revenue and those 15 companies would drive almost all of VC returns.
So as growth decelerated rapidly for many in SaaS in 2022-2023, one of the first things cut was marketing. It’s not always ideal, but I get it. It’s a variable cost. Cut marketing, you’re often cutting future growth. But it’s a “simple” place to cut to at least stabilize the ship and survive to fight another day.
What drives the acquisition market of startups? It’s the big deals. In the last decade, the total number of venture backed software M&A by count has remained relatively constant. The black line shows the linear trend across US venture backed companies with disclosed values of $50m or more. The average & median counts by year total 58 & 55 respectively.
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Speaker: Ben Epstein, Stealth Founder & CTO | Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO, Aggregage
When tasked with building a fundamentally new product line with deeper insights than previously achievable for a high-value client, Ben Epstein and his team faced a significant challenge: how to harness LLMs to produce consistent, high-accuracy outputs at scale. In this new session, Ben will share how he and his team engineered a system (based on proven software engineering approaches) that employs reproducible test variations (via temperature 0 and fixed seeds), and enables non-LLM evaluation m
Ready for an immersive exploration of the pressing real-world challenges confronting the gaming industry? If so, join FastSpring at GamesBeat Summit 2024! We’d love to talk with you in person! Join us at the Marina del Rey Marriott, in Los Angeles, CA, on May 20th and 21st, for an extraordinary event dedicated to all things video gaming. This year’s theme is Resilience and Adaptation, where we will all delve into the strategies needed to adapt and thrive.
The electric grid, a vast and complex system of wires and power plants, is essential to our economy and underpins our industrial strength. Currently, we face a critical challenge: our electricity demands — expected to nearly double by 2040 due to factors like AI compute, reshoring , and “electrification” — are soaring, but our grid infrastructure and operations struggle to keep pace.
So just a little while back, Lenny Rachintsky had me on his hyper-popular podcast to talk about scaling sales, from the perspective of a founder who hasn’t really done sales. It ended up being super popular, and a fresh take on a lot of topic we talk about a lot on SaaStr. I still regularly get emails about it, and the full deep dive is above.
Amazon announced their earnings yesterday. Like Microsoft & Google, Amazon’s Web Service business is seeing a surge of growth, up from 13% annual to 17% annual growth (16% when excluding the leap year). Aside from the overall growth of these clouds increasing, the massive investment in CapEx data centers, power plants, and GPUs is stunning.
Savvy B2B marketers know that a great account-based marketing (ABM) strategy leads to higher ROI and sustainable growth. In this guide, we’ll cover: What makes for a successful ABM strategy? What are the key elements and capabilities of ABM that can make a real difference? How is AI changing workflows and driving functionality? This Martech Intelligence Report on Enterprise Account-Based Marketing examines the state of ABM in 2024 and what to consider when implementing ABM software.
Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Hype Rounds vs Fundamental Rounds The show Silicon Valley is one of my favorites - just so many nuggets of humor in that show. A favorite clip of mine is when Russ Hanneman is talking about how pre-revenue businesses are the best kind of businesses.
For those embarking on a website migration, keep in mind the importance of meticulous planning coupled with flexibility and constant communication with stakeholders. This will let your migration unlock new potential and achieve unparalleled growth.
Ready to join Europe’s biggest startup and tech event with the leading startups, investors, executives, and media from 174 countries? If so, join FastSpring in Paris at VivaTech 2024 at Booth C45! We’d love to talk with you in person! Join us at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, in Paris, France, on May 22nd – 25th, for an extraordinary event dedicated to all things tech.
It’s an exciting, relieving, high-anticipation day for all of us at SparkToro. Today’s launch—which we call “V2″—is the culmination of more than a year of work, including a complete rebuild of the infrastructure and data sources for our product.
For SaaS businesses, improving retention is one of the easiest and most effective ways to drive revenue and profits. With a clear link between failed payments and customer churn, having a robust failed payment recovery solution isn’t optional—it’s essential. Achieving your retention goals starts with the right solution.
Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 5 Things I Should Know Before Starting a SaaS Startup? My Top 5: It will take you at least 24 months to really get anywhere. Everyone mentally budgets 10–12 months. It’s never enough. At least, not to get enough paying customers from Code Zero. A little more here: [link] A co-founder not equally committed will blow up on you, and best case, is a disaster you will have to clean up later.
In “Do software companies actually have good margins?”, Benn Stancil makes a case for a counterintuitive point : Software companies are much less profitable than they might seem. Why? Because the research & development costs associated with software should be part of their cost of goods sold. Software companies don’t invest once in R&D & then sell copies of the software as we did in the 90s on CDs.
Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Rubrik IPO Update This week Rubrik launched their IPO with an initial pricing range of $28 - $31 / share. This range represents roughly a $6B valuation at the midpoint ($29.50 / share), with a ~6.5x NTM revenue multiple.
There’s no doubt that AI is impacting the role of marketers around the world, but the skills marketers need to thrive in the future go beyond simply leveraging AI tools. Learn the top 4 skills marketers will need in the future in this blog post.
Simplify omnichannel payments with a solution that unifies every channel through your platform. By integrating front-end systems like online, mobile, and in-store payments with robust back-end infrastructure, you can deliver a seamless payments experience without the need for heavy engineering. Omnitoken technology enhances security by tokenizing card transactions for reuse, enabling merchants to drive cross-selling opportunities.
Background: As part of our ongoing commitment to providing you with the best possible experience, we’re streamlining our payment methods to ensure the highest standards of safety and compliance. In alignment with this commitment, certain payment methods are being carefully evaluated and, where necessary, removed. This proactive measure enables us to maintain a robust security framework, protecting both your interests and the integrity of our services.
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Joe Sullivan sheds light on balancing educational outreach with sales tactics and how to position your brand as a thought leader. The post How to get in front of your audience before they’re ready to buy appeared first on Predictable Revenue.
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